Colony management, making lemonade

I think this falls in line with management. About 4 weeks back I noticed one of the colonies in my home yard was lacking young brood. Made a note that there might be a queen problem, I found what looked like an open cell.  First thought was they superseded her, (she was over a year old and not very good).  So I left them. Checked about a week and a half later, no brood, no signs of eggs or larvae. Gave them a frame from a different hive. Waited a week, no queen cells on the frame. So I figure there's a queen but just not laying. Again I waited until last Wednesday. No brood, no eggs, no sign of queen. So now what are my options. Something we should all think about from time to time. I had several grafts being made into queens, there are at least 4 virgin queens in mating nucs so getting a queen in a week shouldn't be a problem. And hopefully next year, from March to November we'll have queens all the time. Considered different possibilities, I really wanted a mated queen to put on the box in a cage and check the reaction. One can determine quickly if there is a queen in the box like this. I decided to go to a different yard and pull a frame of brood, at least with brood in the box the pheromones will suppress laying workers.  And the brood will maintain the population somewhat. While in that hive I spotted the queen. She too was a year old, and although still laying, I had planned to replace her in November. Made a quick decision to catch her and see if the first box was queen-less. Took home the frame of brood, put the queen in a cage and checked. Bees immediately came up to check out the queen. Fed her through the holes in the cage, were not aggressive just welcoming. So there was not a queen. Time to make some more decisions. Do I take this queen back to her old home? Do I leave her in this box in a cage overnight? Maybe for a few days? If I leave her then take her away will they suddenly panic and start making cells? (Now that''s something I might try to experiment with).  So here is what I decided. The second colony is very strong with four frames of brood and a lot of young larvae. I decided to leave the queen caged for two days in the first hive, check for any queen cells in the second colony and go from there. Meantime my grafts and virgins can be doing their things. Went back and checked the second box, at least 8 queen cells. I figure I'll leave them alone and create a bit of a brood break. In the first box I decided I'd release the queen after the third day but also after doing an oxalic acid treatment. There is currently no brood in this hive so it should be quite effective. Pulled out the queen, put her in my pocket and gassed the hive. Waited an hour and put the caged queen back in. The next morning I let her out, she ran right down between the frames. I'll check this box in four days for brood. In 11 days or so one of the capped cells will emerge as the new queen, in hive 2. So on day 9 or 10 I'll do an OA treatment there.  Will still be some capped brood but not a lot. Here is a prime example of why a beekeeper should have at least two strong colonies of bees. From the misfortune of losing a queen, I'm using the time to replace a weak queen and treating two hives for mites. Making some lemonade from what could have been bad.

Racist branding

I'm really growing tired of the constant racist branding going on. It's almost gotten to a point where if someone simply notes that another person is a different color then that person is a racist.  Looking up the term in Websters finds a racist one who practices racism, which is defined here;  

1: : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

2. : a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles.  
     : a political or social system founded on racism

3. : racial prejudice or discrimination

So today here's my issue. Last week Megyn Kelly, (she's some TV news personality, I didn't know who she was until this week). Made some comments about Halloween costumes and black or white face paint.  She said nothing about demeaning races, nothing at all which coincides with the above definitions.  Simply about costumes, and what actually constitutes racism. Now that would really be an excellent discussion. What exactly constitutes racism? Since this episode there have been comparisons to another TV personality, someone named Luann who dressed as Diana Ross. I didn't see what she did as Diana, from what I understand there was nothing disrespectful about it. It was some costume, perhaps she really admires Diana and wanted to look like her. But that has been called racist.   I did some searching and couldn't find any comments by Diana Ross, was she even offended?  We're getting too sensitive to what really isn't a problem and making a real problem much worse.  Is there racism? Certainly but not as much and not in all of the places we're lead to believe. 

About 30 years ago there was a black pop star who had this signature thing about wearing a sequined glove. That year I saw a lot of kids, of pretty much every race wearing a glove on Halloween and no-one screamed racism. For at least the past 30 years, costumes have featured president's faces. If someone wears an Obama face is that person a racist? Nixon, and Reagan are OK but Obama isn't?  Let's get a grip here. I also expect to see a fair number of hockey masks, are we demeaning all hockey players? 

It's not always about what someone does but why they do it. Disney has been accused of racism because in cartoons they use black musicians and copy their mannerisms. I'd call that complimentary. If I make a cartoon and include Chuck Berry as a character, at some point he's going to play guitar and skip across the stage, just as any cartoon of Michael Jackson will moon walk. It's only racism if the intent falls in line with the above definition. 

I'm sure Ms Kelly will come out all right, my understanding is that she was making 28 million a year. Most of us working class might make 2 million in a lifetime. But that's not the problem. The problem is we have the speech and thought police everywhere. The most heinous crimes today are offending someone. And the fear that someone might offend someone is beginning to dictate policies in our society and workplaces. Pretty soon simply breathing in the same room with someone will be an offense and subject to discipline.

Getting stung all the time. Why do I do it?

I haven't posted anything here for a while and I'll just ramble a bit. I'm frequently asked if I get stung a lot and my answer is most days in the club yard at least a couple of times. Lately it's been real nice, there's a honey flow on and it seems that you can really do a lot before getting them mad enough to sting. But I digress. It's probably about an 80 percent probability that I'll get at least 1 sting in any of the yards. (I now have bees in 4 locations). The why question though is hard to answer. Does it hurt? Yes, especially Saturday as I worked the hive in shorts and a bee crawled up my leg. I think she just panicked and couldn't get out so I took one in the posterior.  No I don't enjoy the stings. But I do enjoy the bees. I'm constantly intrigued by everything that they do. I've seen that the colonies have good and bad days, that the attitude can change with the weather and availability of food. When I make up a cell starter, putting a bunch of bees in a box without a queen, within just minutes they start to roar. They know there is no queen, no brood, no hope to continue and they get excited. Then just a few hours later, after adding a frame with a few larvae the right age to make queens, you can hear the sounds change. That's pretty cool, maybe that's the control freak in me. And I really enjoy the making of queens, or well not exactly me making them but the process of getting the bees to do it.  Although the excitement has dropped a little, I still remember the first queen that emerged then went out and successfully mated. That was a thrill.  Not quite so much anymore but still amazing that I can take a larvae from a wax cell, put it in a plastic cup and 12 days later a queen comes out.  And if all goes right within two weeks she's laying eggs and if I wanted to I could take one of her larvae and do the same thing.  But I think the most fun part in all of this is Sunday afternoons. We work our club yard every Sunday. There are a few regulars. Sometimes we just take a quick kook in a few boxes, other times, like today, we go through all of them. Most weeks we have a newcomer and that's the thrill. Things go pretty fast but I try to make sure that the newbee holds a frame of bees and gets to see all of the details. That's how we hook them. And then, after coming for a few weeks and showing a real interest I get to ask the question; "Are you ready for bees yet". Which means that next week they'll be taking home a nuc. That's why I do it. I like the bees and eventually plan to make some money selling queens, but right now, the real driving force is getting bees to people who really want bees.

Queen mating resources

As I've gotten a bit better with my grafting and the production of emerged virgin queens, I find myself in a dilemma. For every emerged queen I need a mating nuc, which means essentially 1 frame of brood, preferable a frame mostly capped with some food on it. The problem now, or what soon could be, is that as I'm grafting and getting more queens, I will eventually need 12 to 20 mating nucs. And I simply don't have enough brood frames to fill the nucs.  I'm asking the club if some members would donate a medium ( I use all mediums) frame of capped brood to put in boxes. Considering that I had 9 cells started in mom's yard, I should have some emerged queens Thursday and will need bees.
I will make some mating nucs this weekend and could use bees Wednesday evening. I figure 4 frames this week, and another 4 next week. Not going to do any grafts this week as they would emerge while I'm at bee college. I'll come to you and grab a frame.

Next season, if things work out, I'd like to have a yard where we could have two or three breeder colonies and 30-50 mating boxes. (since they would be doubles it would be 15-25 boxes). I'd also like to get one or two more people in the whole process. Something to remember when rearing queens is that once you start you are controlled by the calendar. You MUST either cage them or move them by day 12-14 because she can come out anytime after 14 days, especially if you grafted a day 6 instead of a day 4 larvae (been there done that). It's late in the year to try and start this now, but March will get here soon enough and the first week of March is prime time to start rearing queens. Once established, as a club resource we could feasibly raise 6-10 queens a week. Those which are not needed could be mated and banked for a time. Trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of mated queens is a problem I can live with, much better than scrambling to find one. 

If you can donate a frame, let me know by Tuesday. If you're interested in queen breeding, let's talk at the October meeting.

A timing belt and a tent

It's not about beekeeping, at least not directly, it is about life though. My wife's car is a 1999 Mercury, she travels all over the county for her job and as I don't know the maintenance history, decided it would be a good idea to change the timing belt.  Our schedules as they are, the only real time I had was Labor Day. Which for me turned out to be a day of labor. I'd removed a bee colony Sunday evening but couldn't get all of them, there are always some foragers out and about. So I promised the homeowner to return Monday morning to collect whatever clustered overnight. Did that, picked up a few more pounds of bees. Took them to the yard and added to the removal. Got home and started on the car, it was about 10:00.  Things were moving fairly smoothly until around 12:00 when the thunderstorm hit. I waited it out for a bit, looked a the radar and saw it was pretty bleak. Called a friend with a pop up tent, an EZ up. No problem, went and borrowed that. Back to the car now under a tent. The rest of the job went fairly well, I did have to go to the parts store for spark plugs, discovered that one of the originals had two pretty serious cracks in the porcelain. Felt pretty dumb too, her car has had an occasional miss for nearly a year, the computer diagnostic said it was the variable timing. There was a time, before car computers, when I would have pulled spark plugs first. A lesson learned, trust my instincts and not computers. The timing belt that came off had several small pieces missing from one edge and a pretty good flap, failure was eminent. A good decision to change it when I did. Thanks to my dad who taught me so much about cars so many years ago. And thanks to my friend with the pop up tent. I finished the job by 4:20 so Vicki could drive it to work at 6:00.

An all Bee weekend

Just doing lots of Bee stuff all weekend, started with Friday. Went up to PSJ with Eddie to take a colony out of a window behind the hurricane shutter. Big colony, a lot of honey but nearly no capped brood, and no larvae or eggs, so this was a queen-less colony and a real rescue. Saturday I spent the day with several other club members at the new Honey Bee Research Lab at UF.  Met some more odd people (they play with bees too). Toured the facility and made some friends. Excited about Bee College this October.  Last week Stuart removed two swarms from the local marina, both in relatively the same area. So we discussed the three removals, the swarms and the window bees and decided to combine both swarms, find one of their queens and re queen the window bees.  Sounded like a plan. Started in swarm 2, found the queen, caught her in a clip and tucked her away.  On to swarm 1. Did not actually see the queen but we found one side of 1 frame fully drawn and capped brood, larvae and eggs on the other side, even found eggs in some burr comb we cut off.  So the caged queen went in the window bees box and we were going to merge the two swarms through paper. Went to get yet another swarm from the marina, pretty easy, scraped them in a box, put on a queen excluder and waited a little while. The bees that we missed went in the box so we're fairly certain we got the queen. Back to the club yard to set things up. Going to merge the two swarms first. Opened the queen less box and there were no bees. Looked around, did not see a swarm. Thought they may have gone to the box with their old queen. Opened swarm 1 and found the missing bees. The box was packed full of bees, they merged themselves while we were gone, added the other box and frames to give them more room.   Always fascinated by these little bugs. Other events in the yard. Loriann got her second box started with some top bars that we hung on modified hangers. And John got a nuc split, two frames and a bunch of bees. They have the means to make a queen, just need to see what happens. I did another set of queen grafts today. While I am having a certain amount of success getting cells, my percentage of mated queens sucks. But I'm sure it will get better.  There are a lot of methods, I just need to find what works best for me.

The queen in the yellow box must go

I started to call her something that begins with a B but thought better of that. I'm sure that you can figure it out.  We typically have anywhere from 7 to 15 beehives in the club yard at any time. With recent additions I believe we are at 9 plus the twin mating nuc. We have a colony in the back of the yard in a yellow box. Been there perhaps two months. Every time I've been in that box they've been pretty nasty. Yesterday we went in and sure enough they came out pretty mean. Stuart thought perhaps they had a high mite load. I thought that's possible and made plans to do a mite wash and OAV treatment.  Yesterday evening, Eddie and I went to Titusville and removed a colony from under a storage shed. There were perhaps six frames of capped and uncapped honey in nice new almost white comb. Eddie took that home. We had to pull up the floor in two places to find the whole colony, the brood nest was fourteen combs, each five inches deep and 16-18 inches long. We cut the comb and put six pieces in an 8 frame box and two in a nuc. The rest I am rendering down. It was late when we got done so we put the vacuum box on a hive stand and the 8 frame on top, then pulled the divider. I like that aspect of the box, it just lets the bees migrate up and I can dump the trash later. The nuc I put at mom's house. I wanted to check them today and re-stack so I figured I'd do a mite wash on the yellow box while there. For those who were there yesterday, if you thought they were bad then you should have seen them today. Maybe it was because yesterday there were five of us and just me today but I was surrounded. Wore sweatpants and a sweat shirt, no stings through the clothes but at least 100 stingers in the fabric.  One got in my veil and I took a hit to the left forehead. Did an alcohol wash, shook off five frames from the second box up, mostly brood frames. I let some of the fliers go and did a pretty good look for the queen, although considering the temperament I really wasn't that concerned. Did not see her. First wash showed no mites, thats zero.  Thought no way right. So I did another. Looked specifically for drone comb, shook off three frames, with drone brood, did another wash. One mite. So much for a heavy mite load.  Took all of the bees from the wash home and counted, 496. From 496 bees I got 1 mite. This queen needs to go. As soon as I have a mated queen she has an appointment with destiny. On some positive notes. The cut out from yesterday was attaching the comb to the frames and bringing in pollen, way cool. I looked for the queen but did not see her. Stopped by mom's on the way home to check some QC's, I caged two capped cells that will come out Friday or Saturday. In a matter of contrast, In the yellow box I had a sweatshirt tucked into sweatpants as body armor. In mom's box I was wearing a T shirt and shorts, no gloves but a veil and they didn't even care that I was there.  I want more of these kind of bees.